TMA | Help

Introduction

Based on Julian Cope's epic guidebook of the same name, The Modern Antiquarian website is a community-based project that invites the user to add their own knowledge & experiences of the ancient sites of the UK & Ireland – distilled into the colour-coded categories of News, Images, Fieldnotes, Folklore, Miscellaneous, Weblinks & Nearby Facilities. Currently The Modern Antiquarian website carries information on over 4,000 megalithic sites with over 18,000 user contributions, including over 10,000 images (as of September 2003ce).

The Modern Antiquarian site is free to join — sign up at Head Heritage for a username & password.

Features

The Modern Antiquarian has a number of flexible ways in which users can browse the content:

Home Page

From the home page users can quickly see the latest images that have been added, and the latest 6 news items. Down the right hand side, the clickable map of the UK & Ireland provides a launch pad for browsing sites & the latest posts for that region, and links are also given to the last 5 weblog entries and the latest forum posts.

Latest Posts

The Latest Posts page is a log of all the latest site-related content added to the Modern Antiquarian. The page can have a filter applied to it, e.g. to only show the latest folklore posts, or the latest images added.

News

Following a similar format to the Latest Posts page, the News page shows the latest 10 news posts, with links to their respective sites.

Technicolour Map Browser

Updated with new features, the Technicolour Map Browser allows users to pan/zoom & scroll around an accurate map of the UK & Ireland locating sites of interest. The new format displays site information and posts inline, making for the ultimate interactive guide to the UK & Ireland's megalithic sites.

Forums

The long-running Head Heritage/Modern Antiquarian discussion board, full of lively debate and now with improved accessibility and the ability to associate a thread with a particular site, effectively giving each site on The Modern Antiquarian it's own forum, e.g:

Contributors

The Contributors page is an index of all registered users that have made contributions to the site, sortable by username and number of posts by that user. Each contributor has a set of pages comprising of a weblog (see below), a user profile and interfaces onto all their submitted content, making for easy browsing of all posts by a particular user.

Links

Following a similar format to the Latest Posts page, the Links page shows the general (i.e. not site-specific) links that have been submitted to The Modern Antiquarian

Search

The Quick Search function, at the top of every page, provides an excellent way to locate sites. If you type in the name of the site exactly, you will be automatically redirected to that site's page. You can also give a mainland UK postcode and the website will return a listing of sites within a 20 km radius.
Use the main Search Page for more advanced searches, such as searching within site posts or forum posts, or to find sites within a bigger or smaller radius of a given postcode.

News

Images

Try and resist the temptation to post all your images of sites. Look at the images that have already been posted for a site and ask yourself if yours would genuinely add anything new. If so, please post your images!

Fieldnotes

Fieldnotes are either on-site notes or a brief summary of a site visit. Try and keep these lean and relevant, leaving out details of the snacks you ate/how many times you had a wee etc.

Folklore

Tales and myths relating to ancient sites are particularly interesting - share any that you know of but do try and recount the tale to the best of your abilities, giving references and quotations wherever possible.

Miscellaneous

Any other worthy information that doesn't fit into the other categories.

Links

Links to other websites giving additional information on a specific site or region.

Facilities & Facility Reviews

Information on facilities that may empower the megalithic traveller are most welcome, be they pubs, hotels, tourist information centres or museums.

Weblog

For publishing essays or to tie a group of posts from one fieldtrip together.

More inforation about the various types of content you can submit is available on the individual submisison pages or in the submission guidelines.

Copyright

Any information or image that you contribute to The Modern Antiquarian remains under your copyright. Neither Head Heritage nor Harper Collins (the publisher of The Modern Antiquarian book) lay claim to any content published on this site. Indeed, Harper Collins have no involvement with this website whatsoever.

Contact

With a collaborative project such as this there's always massive room for both error and improvement. Please report any errors you note to editors@themodernantiquarian.com, supplying correct information where possible. If you have any suggestions or criticisms, please email feedback@themodernantiquarian.com. We will continue to invest time and effort into making this site as useful and user-friendly as it can be, and our job will be made easier by knowing what people want from this site and how they use it.